Sunday, June 28, 2009

Capitalism works

Listening to a bunch of Sunday morning political shows. Cap-and-tax and its possibilities for passing the Senate were mentioned. Many commentators brought up a number of issues, mainly that the legislation won't actually reduce carbon emissions by very much, won't reduce carbon emissions significantly globally because China and India aren't playing, and it mainly only gives Comrade Osama a different hand to play at upcoming international Climate Change events -- he'll be able to sell out the USA to the latest version of the Kyoto Treaty.

Wow, doesn't that just send a tingle up your leg?

Domestically, Pazzo Pelosi insists that cap-and-trade will add many jobs to the US economy in a new "green" sector, that is, making and installing windmills and solar panels. You know, Pazzo, if that were true it would already be happening without any compulsion from the federal government. If citizens were mad for green energy, and if it were affordable compared to fossil fuels, right now everyone would be trading in their old furnaces and air conditioners for the new technologies. The truth is, green power generation technologies are more expensive, less reliable, less applicable to things like cars. And massive windmill farms and solar panel installations -- those large enough to actually power a whole community -- come with their own disadvantages.

If there was money to be made in this field, a lot more capital would be moving toward it. As it is, a very few companies are wholly dedicated to green power -- primarily those in which Pazzo, Gore, and other green fanatics are heavily invested. The so-called green industry has, however, given rise to a lot of kinda dodgy "carbon offset exchanges" that on their faces look like schemes contrived by Bernie Madoff. (When you get on a plane, buy $50 worth of carbon offsets that I will give to my friend who is experimenting with solar batteries in his garage.)

A big argument against the Alaskan pipeline was that it would prevent the caribou from migrating and otherwise displace all kinds of wildlife, etc., in the Arctic Circle. One thing -- exactly how much wildlife is there in the Arctic Circle? Not a really diverse range of critters can stand the cold or find food enough to sustain themselves there. And consider that the pipeline is passive 90% of the time and doesn't take up any more space than a highway.

Then look at wind farms and solar panels. They occupy much more space in more temperate climates and for that reason alone, would seem to disrupt the lives and habits of many more species, human and other. Are windmills and acres of mirror-like solar panels any more attractive than oil derecks? They will probably kill the sage and cacti living in their shadows, along with the entire spectrum of bugs and snakes and things that live on the sage and cacti.

Proponents also claim that forcing US citizens to abandon fossil fuels in favor of wind and solar -- and increasingly, biomass -- will free America from its dependence on foreign oil. However, we do have fossil fuel resouces in the US that we are forbidden to exploit, so that's just a lot of crap, isn't it? If freeing America from its dependence on foreign oil was the big issue, right now we have a lot of options to accomplish this, including nuclear, but apparently our dependence on foreign oil just isn't important enough to Comrade Osama and Pazzo Pelosi to let Americans take advantage of our domestic resources and ingenuity.

Biomass is a strange thing. Biomass is organic materials, mostly wood and wood products. Many people who are now promoting biomass as a fuel preferable to fossil fuels are the very same people who in the past have chained themselves to giant sequoias and even douglas firs, to protect certain species of squirrels and owls from losing their habitat. How do you get around that? I mean, were the tree-huggers reasonable then, or are they reasonable now? Or, just exactly when did these people ever concern themselves with reality? How can anyone believe their desperate pleas and protestations on anything, when they seem to just attach themselves to the latest subcultural fad or fancy?

And speaking of cultural fads and fancies.... Is there really any proof that CO2 is destroying the planet? We all exhale CO2 when we breathe out. Anyone working on any new technology to change that to create a more hopeful future for you and me? ("For you and me" should be sung.)

The Kyoto Treaty is simply a nightmare for both developed and underdeveloped nations, and ensures that the third world will remain poor, sick, and dependent. It's kinda like a global cap-and-trade scheme, whereby countries like the US, Japan, England, France, Germany, et. al., will be compelled to purchase carbon offsets from countries like Angola, which don't use them. It's simply another way to create a global welfare system. Proponents say the money the third world derives from worldwide cap-and-tax will fund its development. But how can these nations develop when development would mean eliminating their income from cap-and-tax? Their development would force them to become buyers rather than sellers of offsets, and ultimately that would drive up the cost of development and especially growth for everyone.

The Kyoto Treaty and its 2nd and 3rd generations are all half-baked drivel OR a thinly-disguised attempt at the 1st world to keep the 3rd world under its heel. Is this what the "We Are the World" people had in mind? I honestly don't think so, and I don't understand why they support it as one of their liberal causes. Except that they accept it like some kind of silver bullet to solve everyone's problems instantly. You know what? Real magic like that hardly ever happens.

What third world nations need is unrestricted capitalism -- that is, investment from outsiders to fund their own domestic industries. Radicals are fond of calling this sort of thing "industrial imperialism," but foreign investment serves a couple very important purposes. One is funding the R&D that goes into developing industry, or actually surveying a nation's resources and determining the best and most profitable pathways for development. Two, foreign-funded industry sets up the infrastructure of communications and transportation necessary for trade, as well as the internal legal protocols -- like establishing the principle of private property. Three, foreign-funded industry trains managers and technicians and pays them enough to improve their standard of living. In general, forein investment paves the way for domestic development and ownership of industry. And it's all done with a profit.

Isn't this a better model than the Kyoto Treaty? I mean, really, think about it. That's all I ask.

Finally, and never the least consideration, capitalism ensures political freedom and individual liberty -- so long as it's individuals and private investors who own, operate, and work for a nation's industries. These people all become stakeholders in a free society and grow reluctant to surrender their property, rights, and freedoms. Their personal individual ownership also gives them a powerful means of resistance to political demagogues and dictators. Like, the French Revolution could not have ever happened without the resources of the new bourgeois middle class behind it to fund and implement it. Poor, starving people rarely rebel. They usually just shuffle off into oblivion and die quietly.

Isn't capitalism a better model than the Kyoto Treaty? Really. For the love of God -- look at human history. Exactly who has succeeded and who has failed? And that's success by any measure -- material prosperity, health, freedom, a civil society.... you name it.

And this is even with full awareness that capitalism can bring excesses. Individuals will find opportunities in capitalism for crime and corruption, but not on the massive and unstoppable scale of government fraud and corruption -- both of which are hallmarks of governments in the third world (and more and more, in the USA) and are huge obstacles to their further development.

That's all for now. Have to go cut my grass while the good weather holds up -- or make hay while the sun shines, as we used to say in the US.

Saturday, June 27, 2009

Mr. Boehner goes to Washington

I watched John Boehner (R-Ohio) for a few minutes on C-SPAN this evening. He's the House Minority Leader. He was doing a "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" thing. He has a great voice, too.

The cap-and-tax bill was 1200 pages or so, and the Dems added a 300-page amendment onto at 3:09 am the morning it was due to come to a vote. So Boehner announced that congress should be aware of what's in the amendment (at least), and he began to read it on the floor of the House.

Thought that was cool, but I had to work and couldn't watch much more. Apparently he didn't read the whole amendment. I'm sure that would have looked too much like a filibuster. Maybe they should have done a filibuster, but I don't believe they are allowed in the House.

One of those silly bitches from Maine -- remember the Brewster Aunts from "Arsenic & Old Lace" -- in the senate is suggesting some kind of compromise now. Idiot. Just vote it down, you brainless twit. The thing is, though, Maine is a big state in the paper industry, and the paper industry LIKES this bill because they got the consideration out of it that they wanted (see the AFandPA.org website.)

So time for this sell-out senator to do her part to shove this stinking bill through, even though killing this piece of drek is the last hope we have to save the country. I suppose selling out the Republicans, when this senator is a Republican, makes her feel important. "Hey! Look at this! I may be small and have a silly squeaky little voice, but I can screw up the whole country! Na-na-nana-na." I truly do hope the Republicans refuse to fund her next campaign.

What happens in a republic when the representatives no longer represent? When they're more concerned about sucking up to some blockhead like Pazzo Pelosi or an industry organization than protecting the principles behind the nation? The paper industry is on the skids, anyway, especially in Maine. And, hey, buttheads -- Those jobs are gone! They aren't coming back no matter how many congressional butts you kiss!

But I guess the reasoning is, if you can't cut down trees anymore to make paper, you might as well burn down the forests and call it "biomass," which is, curiously, an acceptable option to the tree-huggers. Whatever happened to savng the ancient forests? Aren't they afraid of losing their homes up there in the high branches?

I mean, everyone says "Write your congressmen." My congressmen are a little to the left of Vladimir I. Lenin and/or got their senate seat by paying off a disgraced governor who's being tried for accepting bribes. In Illinois, we don't even get to elect senators. We buy them; or rather, they buy somebody, who buys somebody, who...

What good does it do? Congress doesn't listen. They're otherwise engaged -- eyes popping, tongues lolling out, watching their betters glide along Constitution Avenue in limos, so impressed at eating pineapple at a White House luau that they completely forget their principles -- if they had any to start with. Which is certainly debatable. Although I do commend Boehner, McCain (like him better now than when he was running for prez), and a few others.

Nothing about Iran on the news lately, either. I suppose the so-called "freedom fighters" got the message: "Speak up and we'll bust your head. Your humanity has no value weighed against our power."

I'm getting the message, too. Only in the USA, people can own guns. It's the 2nd Amendment, AKA "The Enforcement Clause." Jeez, I wonder whose side the military would take? Comrade Osama's or the peoples'? I begin to see the advantage of "citizen soldiers."

Is that what it takes? When representatives in a republic fail to represent, that's usually where it all ends. Seems to have worked for Abracadabrajab in Iran.

Unfortunately, in politics, violence almost always does work. You start pounding people into bloody pulp and killing their families and they usually do what you want them to do.

I don't think the majority (and I don't mean Dems, I just mean more than half) of the people in congress really understand that we don't automatically love or admire them. We don't regard them with the same high opinion that they regard themselves. We tend to suspect they're liars and thieves. And they usually prove themselves to be just that.

Take Conyer (D-Mich) for example. His wife's going to jail for taking a bribe. Well, she was convicted anyway. She could get three-to-five, I understand, but what do you want to bet she'll end up picking up trash along the highway for a couple weekends and the judge will call it even. Apparently Conyer (D-Mich) was asked to investigate Acorn for fraud and whatever the hell other range of criminal behavior they perform as federal contractors, but Conyer announced that "the powers that be" have decided against the investigation. Turns out, Conyer (D-Mich) himself is "the powers that be." Note the use of the royal plural. Another crook.

I should start listing the crooks, bribe-takers, people who can't honor their marriage vows, and those who have invested heavily in yet-to-be-born "green" industries (those who voted "yea" on cap-and-tax) and the like, but then there would be no end to this blog. And the liars... just call the roll, know what I mean?

Let's hope Kim Jung Il comes up with something that can hit Washington DC the next time he decides to get frisky -- in a couple days. Heard he'll probably do something on the 4th of July to add insult to injury. Like anyone in Washington understands that the 4th of July is anything but an excuse for a cook-out and fireworks. Be nice if a little nuke could cauterize DC, though. We'd all be better off.

Friday, June 26, 2009

The day the glamour died

Farrah Fawcett died this morning; Michael Jackson died this afternoon. Wow. I didn't feel a close personal attachment to either one of them, but sad for the loss of both. And both at one time or another personified -- or maybe created -- a momentary popular ideal of glamour and success.

Funny... With the news of Farrah Fawcett this morning, one TV station showed a snippet from a shampoo commercial she did with Penny Marshall about a million years ago. The set-up was, Farrah was the pretty and popular roommate, Penny Marshall was the less attractive sidekick. It's just strange to look back at that. At the time, no one had heard of either one of them and it would be a few years before either was associated with an actual name.

Do remember that damn "big hair" style with the long bangs curling away from your face. That was so incredibly popular and looked so dorky on so many other girls, almost like they were peeping at your from behind a ruffled curtain. You can see the bad copies of that hair style every now and then on the reruns of "Family Feud" on the Game Show Network. That big hair and a few years later, the shoulder pads. Both trends at some point kinda got beyond any type of reasonable control.

And I just can't help but feel sorry for Michael Jackson. First of all, I remember when I was a kid (a few years before Michael Jackson was) driving through Gary, Ind., on one or another vacation. The steel mills were still open. It'd be sunny in Chicago, then Gary was like you'd suddenly driven into an overcast, the air was so polluted. It always smelled like burnt metal. And you could actually see like large particles of something suspended in it, particles larger than dust but smaller than cinders, just kinda hanging in the air. Michael Jackson spent at least part of his childhood in Gary.

A lot of comments about Michael Jackson never having a childhood. Just the opposite: he never could grow up. By the time he was a teenager, he was such a big star -- so recognizable, and so many incomes depending upon him -- that he never really had the opportunity to go through the typical horrors of high school and pimples and all that kind of thing. If his parents wouldn't do something for him, he could pay someone else to get it done.

A long time ago a big topic on the therapeutic talk shows was the results of a study that indicated that kids who'd been spoiled and pampered all their lives exhibited similar behaviors and neuroses as kids who'd been abused and neglected. I do believe you need to experience both bad and good to learn to recognize and understand the difference. I worry about kids who grow up on Ritilin for the same reason. How are they ever supposed to learn how to control themselves without chemistry? Kids are supposed to run around like crazy maniacs (or wild indians, as my mom would say, so politically incorrect.) The maturing process is learning how to direct their own behavior -- learning usually through trial and error.

Commented to my mom one time about those electric-socket caps they have now so your toddlers don't stick their fingers in the wall sockets. I said something like, "I remember being almost electrocuted." Mom just looked at me for a minute, like trying to figure out if I was blaming her for something, then she said, "Well, you only did it once." For sure. She didn't raise any stupid kids.

Michael Jackson was strange. Quite possibly he never really understood, or ever had to learn, social behavioral norms or expectations. All that ever mattered was what he did on stage. All of his energy went into creating the perfect illusion. How do you define reality then? He was probably over-sensitive, never having to learn the emotional defenses most of us acquire as a matter of survival to get past the senior prom disaster and not being picked for the football team. And he was incredibly talented. One of the best dancers I've ever seen. That takes enormous discipline.

Just too bad. Doesn't matter to me how he died, so much as the strange legacy he leaves behind. By the time he was really popular, I'd moved beyond listening to Top Ten music, but remember a young girl I worked with for a time involving me in this conversation about how Michael Jackson was probably a really nice guy, even though at that time there was a big question about his sexual orientation -- this was before he was accused of being a little too interested in children. I think he'd just acquired the skeleton of the Elephant Man, and his chimp, Bubbles, was another curiosity.

Then came his apparent fixation on children. It is entirely possible that he simply felt most comfortable around children without any really evil or sexual intentions. You know where children are coming from and they usually don't strike out to hurt you for no reason, don't understand that a Pop Star is supposed to be... whatever. They wouldn't befriend him for his money or fame, or spend three hours with him and then try to sell their story to the National Enquirer -- though apparently their parents would.

Poor Michael. I hope he's at peace. If you listen to his earliest recordings with the Jackson Five, there's such a gleeful abandon in his voice. And R.I.P. to Farrah, too.

And I still haven't gotten over the fact that Frank Sinatra is no longer with us, or Bob Hope, Jimmy Stewart, Cary Grant, Marilyn Monroe, or John Wayne. I grew up watching "The Late Show," and still have a strong preference for old black-and-white movies. No amount of special effects can replace a plot and characterization. I remember being maybe seven or eight years old and my mom taking my sister and I with her to see "Love Me Tender," Elvis Presley's first movie. He dies in the end. That was the first movie I ever cried over, and I cried all the way home. I'm sure my mom never expected that.

Re-makes just aren't the same. Can you ever imagine anyone surpassing that scene in "On the Waterfront"? When Marlon Brando, turns to his brother, Karl Malden, and says, "I coulda been somebody... I coulda been a contender." Just thinking about it makes me cry. Think I was halfway through "Teahouse of the August Moon" when I realized which character Brando was playing. Then sat silently for a minute trying to wrap my mind around that. He was probably one of the best actors who ever lived. He grew up only a couple miles from where I live now. "People around here might think you're a one-eyed jack, but I seen the other side of your face...."

I'm glad we have audio and visual recording technology today. No one can ever know what Chopin sounded like when he played, or exactly how Beethoven conducted his own symphonies. I love ballet, and without film, or digital now, it could never be recorded. I believe at least one or two audio recordings of Sarah Bernhardt exist, but no visual. But now, like the famous quote says, "Death is nothing at all...."

Really, we have all these people forever.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Socialized medicine gibberish

Whew! What a day so far. I'm actually sorry for Governor Sanford. He seems so contrite. Doubt he would be so affected by this all if he didn't truly believe in marital fidelity and all that.

And here's hoping Comrade Osama's socialized medicine snake oil pitch is buried under these more sensational events.

Just saw Catherine Sibelius, Welfare Czarina (?), in a brief interview on Fox. Like several others from the regime who've spoken on the issue lately, she's talking about how the "government option" in health care (that's the government-run socialist medicine program) will "level the playing field."

Oh, these people are so geniunely and unintentionally funny. They just make my day!

How does a government-funded, government-run option "level the playing field"?

1.) The government has the US Treasury -- what's left of it, after TARP, the GM bail-out, the Stimulus Package, and declining revenues -- to fund its socialist program. By contrast, the private insurance companies have investors and customers to pay for theirs. By the way, this also explains why private insurance and any other industry is way more cost-effective, efficient and devoid of graft and fraud than government-run anything.

2.) The government can and probably will set arbitrary charges for doctors' services and hospital care. Private insurance doesn't have this kind of control over the expenses they cover.

3.) Ultimately, the government can hold a gun to your head, my head, the heads of doctors, nurses, and hospital administrators to compel them to do what the government directs -- like take serious pay cuts, implement rationed care, perform what the doctor himself may believe is inappropriate and even possibly harmful but less expensive procedures. Private insurers certainly don't have this kind of authority.

4.) Due to all of the above, the socialist option can and will completely undermine private insurers and crowd them all out of the marketplace. I believe this is why Comrade Osama is pushing so hard for the socialized medicine option. He wants another US industry to just fall into his lap, the way the financial industry and auto industry has. Then he can stand there and say, "Hey, I didn't ask for this." No, he's just assumes we're all stupid.

Any way you look at it, the "level playing field" is complete crap. And it's a line so often repeated, I just picture all these bureaucrats assembled in a large auditorium. Comrade Osama or one of his minions is at the podium, reading from a teleprompter:

"Repeat after me," he says. "The government option will provide a level playing field." All those assembled recite the Osama-approved mantra over and over until they get it right. And there was a quiz.

It doesn't have to make sense. Osama assumes the American people are so monumentally stupid we'll believe anything to be true if we hear it repeated often enough. But no, Comrade, that's your mistake, not mine.

And what is the demonstrated ultimate outcome of socialized medicine? I refer you to the Healthcare.Cato.org once again, "The Grass Is Greener," or my blogs from recent days ago about how socialized medicine operates in other countries.

Or closer to home, look at Medicare. How many competing insurance programs for seniors are there in the marketplace? Did Medicare create a "level playing field"? Has Medicare -- with $60 billion per year going to fraud -- made the insurance industry "more honest"? (By the way, I checked that $60 billion figure. It comes from stories that ran in the New York Times and the Washington Post, both extremely left-leaning rags, so we can probably assume that the fraud is even more rampant.)

Really. What a load of dung Comrade Osama and Sibelius are peddling. How can anyone trust these people anymore? I mean, when they lie so often and so well, how can you determine if and when they're ever telling the truth?

More realistically, the predictable outcome of socialized medicine is the closure of hospitals, and the mass exodus of highly-trained doctors, nurses, and other health care professionals from the health care industry. They just won't be able to make a decent living in health care anymore. They may end up making considerably less than an assembly line worker at GM -- and with lesser benefits.

For patients, this means long, long waits for exams and treatment, substandard and rationed care, and steadily rising co-pays to support a system that simply won't be worth it.

"Isn't this what you voted for?" Comrade Osama wants to know.

The ABC-TV town hall ballet

I don't know if it's true or not, but I've heard that in North Korea, Kim Jung Il has installed a radio or TV in every private home. This device is fixed on one channel that does nothing but spout pro-government drivel all day. Citizens can't turn it off.

Apparently in the USA, ABC-TV is vying for the role of service provider for this in the Osama regime.

They're doing what they call a "Town Hall Meeting" on socialized medicine. Although apparently only Comrade Osama and his minions will be represented; ABC-TV isn't inviting Republicans or other known opposition to present their views. They won't even take paid advertising from people who have a different view. They say they will allow questions from the audience.

Look, I've been to these things. This is pretty much how it works: If they've scheduled two hours for it, you can be sure at least one solid hour at least will be the pro-socialist crowd doing their sales pitches. They may include videotaped clips from pathetic people who don't have insurance. (I'm one of them. No one's been knocking on my door.) I'm not sure how ABC is setting up the format, but apparently they're doing an interview with Comrade Osama, so perhaps this will occupy one full hour, followed by the sales pitches for socialized medicine from the lesser gods in the regime. Comrade Osama is above the nuts'n'bolts details.

Then they may have "open microphones" somewhere. People will line up to ask questions. OK. These aren't people who just wander in off the street. They're screened before they're admitted to the meeting, and probably nowadays frisked for weapons, as well. Honestly, that's only practical. I mean, they had to reroute the traffic in DC to keep Clinton out of range of drive-by shooters, and all Clinton did was molest willing interns. So I can just imagine what the Secret Service has to contend with nowadays.

ABC may allow 30 minutes or so for public questions. Probably two or three dozen people will line up at the microphones, and they will very likely be asked what their questions are, and certain of them will be moved ahead in line. The TV people say they do this to get a variety of questions in. However, usually they end up with some halfwitted exhibitionist-type in high-waisted double-knit slacks and a turned-around baseball cap spending about 20 minutes praising Comrade Osama and the Socialist Path, and not really having any question, he just wants his mom to see him on TV. ABC probably won't allow any more than three or four questions and, apart from wasting time on the thickheaded panderers, the questions will probably be in the vein of:
  • "How can I sign up for the Public Option?"
  • "How can anyone question your wonderful generosity and warm concern for your loyal subjects, Mr. President of Presidents? Will you kiss my baby for luck?"
  • "Why is anyone opposing your marvelous marxist program?"
  • "My whole family is on federal disability. One or another of us is hospitalized at any given time. The 12 of us have been living in a discarded refrigerator crate down by the railroad tracks because after we get done paying for Grandpa's insulin and Grandma's leukemia medicine, there's not much money left. Can you possibly include toilet paper and an ice chest as part of the benefits?"
My gosh, the inanity of it all...

Watched Hannity tonight. He had Christie Heffner on the "Great American Panel." She pointed out that Joe-the-plumber asked a tough question. Think they're going to let Joe-the-Plumber in the room, let alone anywhere near a microphone?

These things are very carefully choreographed. It will be a lot like the Dance of the Sugar-Plum Fairy.

A long time ago, a friend of mine attended a Health Care Town Hall that was staged by one of the networks. It might even have been ABC; I really don't remember. That guy who looked like Alfred E. Newman -- the guy who was on Nightline, Ted Koppel -- was moderator, so I guess that would make it ABC. At any rate, the thing was a total whitewash rah-rah b.s. presentation pushing government-run socialized medicine.

My friend stood in line at the microphone for about an hour and was totally ignored. Finally, with about five minutes left of the show -- which was presented live -- my friend stepped to the microphone and interrupted whatever was going on on-stage. He just blurted out: "If socialized medicine works so well, how come so many Canadians come to America for health care?"

The resident doctor-consultant on ABC's payroll, who was on the speaker panel -- don't remember his name, either -- looked like he was going to have a stroke. He shouted, "They do not!" [A straight-up lie.] My friend, undaunted, started to offer some numbers, and then they cut away to a commercial.

When the show returned, everyone on the stage was laughing and joking about how these kinds of shows serve as a kind of "safety valve" for the loonies in the world. Yeah, otherwise we might have some kind of situation like downtown Teh'ran.

So don't expect anything but an exercise in futility. No honest opinions will be expressed unless they conform to Comrade Osama's party line. It's all a show to make the drive toward socialized medicine look like a runaway freight train, and if you're smart and want to be popular, Well, Hop aboard, Comrade! We're happy to have you! Grab a Kool-Aid and let me tell you a little bit more about dialectics and historical inevitability!

Then they'll all join hands and sing "This Is Your Country."

In fact, I suggest you boycott ABC in the name of The First Amendment, a free press and the open exchange of ideas. This is pure B.S. Don't play the game.

For me, I'd much rather watch "Ghost Hunters" and "Monster Quest." That's my Wednesday night line up. Always pondering the great mysteries of the universe. "UFO Hunters" is apparently all wrapped up for this season. I never watch the networks anymore. Well... occasionally to get the local weather on WGN, or to watch poor George Will roll his eyes and smack his forehead as George Stephanopoulos shamelessly stumps for the latest liberal five-year-plan on Sunday morning. If I wake up in time.

OK, and I'm writing this at 1:53 a.m. CST, on the morning of June 24. The town hall meeting airs tonight, and no one's seen it yet that I know of.

But I guarantee you this time tomorrow, if you watch that presentation, you'll swear I must be positively psychic. (Call me at 1-800-YEAHSURE and we'll discuss the situation with your boyfriend, very slowly, at $4.00 a minute.)

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Invite a mullah to lunch

Just watched Comrade Osama's press conference. Or parts of it. I did have to mute some of it to restrain myself from throwing a chair at the TV screen. I really can't afford to replace the TV. Easier to replace the Comrade.

Oh, so now he "condemns" the violent repression of protest in Iran.

Too late, Comrade. Congress already got out in front of you on that one.

And how does he express his dismay? By Inviting the Iranians to a White House barbecue on the 4th of July.

What if they burn the US flags? Given past behavior, this is likely.

Osama will probably laugh and hand them another book of matches, and maybe a copy of the Constitution as well.

Comrade Osama likes heavily centralized government control. Why would he argue with the mullahs in Iran? Comrade Osama very probably sympathizes with the Ayatollah's plight. Comrade Osama is probably just now engaged in quiet talks with Hugo Chavez about training a Mobile Tactical Thug Squad to break up the Tea Parties planned in the USA on the 4th of July, just in case the National Guard refuses to muster.

Interesting... On health care, he said the socialized medicine option is necessary because health care costs will continue to rise.

They certainly will, maybe in direct proportion to the rate you tax them, Comrade.

What a blockhead. And I thought I was bad at math.

Monday, June 22, 2009

I know, let's tax the Republicans!

Those silly lugs in Washington have me laughing again. Their latest attempt at scraping enough money together to pay for socialized medicine calls for taxing employer-provided insurance benefits, which isn't new.... But here's the kicker.... Unions are exempt!

That is, any employment benefit gained by collective bargaining will not be taxed -- although benefits to every independent, individual employee will be taxed -- to pay for socialized medicine. The UAW, the teachers' unions, the postal workers, the SEIU, etc. will all be immune from carrying their share of the rather staggering tax burden of socialized medicine.

Oh, those zany legislators! Just have to chuckle.

Picture this:

Late Sunday night. Pazzo Pelosi, Christopher Dudd, Barney Fudd, et. al., weary and exhausted in a conference room somewhere deep within the bowels of the Capitol Building, surrounded by wads of paper -- discarded ideas and calculator tapes -- empty Starbuck's cups, a couple pizza boxes stuffed in the trash can.... The men are in shirt sleeves, ties loosened. Pazzo has kicked off her heels and is shuffling around in bunny slippers. They all have red-rimmed eyes and find themselves continually stifling a yawn. They've been at it all weekend, trying to find the money to pay for socialized medicine. Too bad Geithner won't let them see the Fed's books.... Such a selfish snob....

Suddenly Pazzo jumps up, waving her hands around in those characteristic and vaguely menacing judo chop gestures: "By Jove! I think I've got it! We'll simply tax all the Republicans for this hare-brained scheme, then we won't lose our Democrat voter base!"

"Wew, I agwee that's the wesult we aww want, but how weow we do that?" Barney Fudd asks, genuinely dismayed.

A sly glimmer lights up Dudd's face like a jack'o'lantern. "I get it," he says, "So devilishly simple. How could we fail to see it until now? We'll make the unions exempt from the tax!"

Pazzo exchanges her bunny slippers for the ruby shoes, the men straighten their ties, then they all link arms and skip down the dimly-lit corridors of the Capitol Building, gaily singing, "We'll stick it to the red states, those grim Republican stiffs! ... Follow the Deficit Road! Follow the Deficit Road! Follow the, follow the, follow the, follow the, follow the Deficit Road!"

Fudd, of course, leads these efforts, his munchkin impression being unparallelled.

Oh, those crazy politicians. They never fail to bring a smile to my face.

Let's thank the Wiz they live in Oz and not the USA.

Saturday, June 20, 2009

All God's children just want to be free

Like a lot of other Americans, I contracted a case of PTSD on 9/11. In addition, I clearly recall when Iran fell in 1979, parading US hostages around the streets, burning US flags. I remember waking up one morning to news account on my radio-alarm clock of a failed attempt to rescue US hostages, the effort made, or at least backed, by Ross Perot. That night on the news, the Iranians offered the west a news clip of the remains from that adventure: they dropped a charred human foot from a shoe box onto a desk top.

So I didn't think it would be too upsetting to watch Iranians rioting and all that. More like, "Isn't this what you voted for?" to borrow a phrase from Comrade Osama. Why not hijack a couple airplanes and blow up a few buildings while you're at it?

But it is depressing. More than half the population of Iran is under 30 years old. They don't remember the Shah or the glory of humiliating the USA. They grew up under the harsh control of the mullahs, so you'd think they'd be used to towing the line. Somehow, they aren't.

Which makes me believe that yeah, it's probably true: All God's children just want to be free. Or all of any God's children....

Of course, Comrade Osama is so deeply entrenched in his own political machinations, so calculating, that he won't come out in favor of human freedom. Too controversial. He's hedging his bets. After all, what if the mullahs just start breaking heads and everyone goes home? Apparently the Supreme Holy Butthead has brought in his version of tactical squads from outside of Iran, just in case the Iranian police and military balk at shooting at their brothers and sisters.

Then there's also the question about exactly what the hell Comrade Osama does believe in. His own success, for sure. His godlike silver tongue, for sure. But then I've been around for a long time, and especially around Chicago politics. I think I've finally figured out just exactly where he's coming from: 1968.

During the 2008 election campaign, many people made a lot of noise about Comrade Osama being a cohort of William Ayres. I wasn't sure who William Ayres was. (I was probably stoned at the time.) But then I heard that William Ayres is married to Bernadine Dohrn. Oh-h-h-h. OK.

Let's go back... On the very northern edge of Chicago, north even of the CTA "turnaround" we used to call it, the yards where the subway trains would, literally, turn around and head back south, there was a neighborhood called Juneway Terrace. It was maybe a couple miles square and a maze of big old-fashioned court-styled apartment buildings. Most of these apartments were studios or one bedroom, though some might have been two-bedroom. Overlooking the lovely old Calvary Cemetary, which is actually in the suburb of Evanston, where I grew up.

Anyway, Juneway Terrace, the street, was one main drag through this neighborhood. The area was built apparently for "newlyweds and nearly-deads." People got married, spent a couple years in this rabbit warren of tiny apartments, then moved on to bigger and better things as they established their careers and started a family. Or, having gone through all that, they sold their suburban houses and re-settled as retirees in Juneway. It was convenient to shopping, public transportation, even Lake Michigan. And cheap.

So now comes the 1960s. Northwestern students had made up a large component of Juneway Terrace residents -- those students who lived off the Evanston undergrad campus, anyway. The apartments were cheap. Other young people, including many draft dodgers and runaways, also found Juneway Terrace. By the late 1960s, Juneway was more or less the Haight-Ashbury of Chicago, although Old Town usually is credited with this. Old Town was fashionable and expensive, though, the preserve of college kids who let their hair grow to collar-length, then donned their costly fringed jackets and love beads on Saturday night, hoping to score a dime bag and some free love for the weekend. They weren't really committed. They had homes to go to.

Preceding the 1968 Democratic National Convention, Weathermen and Yippies sent out people whom I can only call "pre-event planners" to find temporary digs for out-of-town protesters. They were very active in the Juneway neighborhood. Everyone with an extra bedroom or spare mattress on the living room floor volunteered to house a Yippie or two during the Convention. The Yippies also routinely totally trashed the premises, including destroying refrigerators and smashing toilets -- these appliances belonged to "the man" -- but that's another story.

Anyway, so this was the Juneway Terrace I knew. Hippie Heaven. More affordable than Old Town for the "real" hippies, not the college students and others who operated on daddy's dime, but the "real" hippies, known only as Raven or Swamp-rat, usually draft dodgers just passin' through, often in search of clean underwear if they hadn't foresworn the use of underwear entirely, and owning nothing but a guitar that they probably couldn't play very well. You could always find a place to spend the night in Juneway, always make a drug connection, and the neighborhood cops were pretty well known to everyone. Not always well-liked, but in a couple cases, the local cops tipped off a favorite hippie pal about a forthcoming drug raid so that the hippie pal could avoid arrest. There was a certain amount of familiarity and sympathy.

So what does this all have to do with Comrade Osama? When I heard the name Bernadine Dohrn, bells went off. It must have been about 1970 or so, when the cops started actually shooting at college kids at Kent State and all... a big rumor went around that Bernadine Dohrn had a bomb factory in one of those apartments in Juneway. It was a rumor -- make no mistake. The bomb factory probably never really existed. But it was a big deal at the time, sort of like a hippie security blanket: OK, so they're shooting at us. But we have a bomb factory. It was almost scary.

No one knew exactly where the bomb factory was -- and believe me, in the Juneway neighborhood, it could have been anywhere. The whole idea was just impressive. And a little scary. Made you think again about where this all might end up.

So I got to thinking about all of this, in terms of Comrade Osama's place in the vast continuum of contemporary history.

Comrade Osama is a 1960s radical. He's still working for the marxist revolution. No coincidence he was a pal of William Ayres and apparently of his wife, Bernadine Dohrn, as well. Comrade Osama grew up on tales of glory of blowing up Draft Board offices and setting Lincoln Park picnic tables ablaze to piss off the pigs. Running up and down State Street breaking windows. No end to these wonderful achievements.

And you know what? Since then, marxism has failed in a genuinely monumental way. Good grief, let a couple people through the turnstyle in Hungary or Czechoslovakia or someplace, and suddenly the whole USSR collapses. Its satellite nations are suddenly floundering for support and moral backing, or lighting candles and singing about freedom.

My God, Ronald Reagan won, riding in on a high-spirited palomino, the cavalry charge sounding in the background.... All God's children just want to be free.

Actually, history has passed Comrade Osama by. Most of the old Juneway neighborhood was torn down and now really is not much more than CTA rail yards. It was easier to tear it down than to try to rehabilitate it. Sorta like the USSR.

Yet Comrade Osama, Ayres, probably Dohrn and many others of my general age group persist in clinging to the old 1960s social stereotypes and dreams of huge, faceless, populist uprisings. They're kinda like what used to be called Red Diaper Babies. Actually, Red Diaper Babies -- kids who grew up on the dreams and aspirations of 1930-style marxist revolutions -- were the people who hoped to lead the unrest of the 1960s. (See anything by David Horowitz.)

However, hippies were never easily led. Most would rather just fire up a joint and groove out on Jimi or Janis. I mean, think of Woodstock as a training camp for 1960s militant radicals. I mean, like, if you get, like, really stoned, and take off your shoes, and sort of like spin around looking up at the stars, and Country Joe is on in the background, it's like, so beautiful, man.... That's about as close as they ever came to making a revolution.

People who were radical college students in the 1960s are the ones who've written all the books about it, filled with righteous rage and love for the underdog and all that. Honestly, though, most of the hippies I knew just didn't want to work on Maggie's Farm (per Bob Dylan) all their lives. Most didn't know much about Vietnam, except that they didn't want to die there. They sure weren't marxists. Many of them grew up to be entrepreneurs, rethinking gym shoes and toasters and creating the Digital Revolution. In Chicago in the mid-1960s, hippie guys would ride the CTA trains passing out flowers. An ad for a head shop (where you could by blacklight posters and things like bongs) was taped around the stem.

Guiding and directing ticked-off and/or disenchanted people is kinda like herding cats. Or, more cliche, like teaching a pig to sing -- it doesn't work and the pig resents it. They even resent it in Iran, where they don't know anything but tight authoritarian control and continuous badgering.

All God's children just want to be free, no matter how much health insurance, green cars, and moral sanctity you try to shove down their throats. In fact, government control of any kind only irritates them. Not that Americans will take to the streets unless they really have to. More like, the United Socialist States of America is just making itself irrelevant. We'll all just go underground.

The health of the state

First of all, let me say that the title of this blog, "The health of the state," has absolutely nothing to do with health care. It's a quote from a Machiavellian-type figure who noted that war represents "the health of the state." That is, a nation that more or less pro-actively goes to war is flexing its muscles. It's not an attractive thought, but then neither is socialized medicine.

OK. I got an email from Cato Institute, a free market think tank. They have launched a web site at: Healthcare.Cato.org, which offers a number of in-depth studies on health care in the USA and elsewhere, and also provides suggestions for positive real-world solutions to rising costs and all the other problems US health care and health insurance is supposed to have.

I got so fascinated with two of these reports that I never got around to reading the alternative solutions... Anyway, following are some well-documented facts from the Cato reports. And I strongly suggest that anyone who's really interested in this subject -- and all Americans should be right now -- that you go to the web site and download the full reports. They're PDF files and free of charge.

Let's start with any projected costs for socialized medicine. I wrote in another blog that Medicare costs were wildly underestimated in the mid-1960s when that system was first implemented. At the time I wrote that, I couldn't find the statistics. (They used to be at a government site, but darned if I can find them now.) Anyway, this is from Cato's "Obamacare to Come -- Seven Bad Ideas for Health Care Reform," by Michael Tanner.

However, cost estimates for government programs have been wildly optimistic over the the years, especially for health care programs. For example, when Medicare was instituted in 1965, it was estimated that the cost of Medicare Part A would be $9 billion by 1990. In actuality, it was seven times higher -- $67 billion. Similarly, in 1987, Medicaid's special hospitals subsidy was projected to cost $100 million annually by 1992 (just five years later); however, it actually cost $11 billion -- more than 100 times as much. And in 1988, when Medicare's home care benefit was established, the projected cost for 1993 was $4 billion, but the actual cost was $10 billion. If the current estimates for the cost of Obamacare are off by similar orders of magnitude, we would be enacting a new entitlement that could bury future generations under mountains of debt and taxes.

In the report, "The Grass Is Not Always Greener," author Michael Tanner reviews socialized health care systems from about a dozen nations around the world, including those most highly rated by the U.N.'s World Health Organization (WHO.) WHO rates the US system about 37th or 38th, largely because it's not government-run, doesn't guarantee universal accessibility, and doesn't come as part of a package of other social programs. Apparently WHO doesn't put much weight on how effective a health care system is in terms of actually preventing and curing disease. Those other factors are more important -- which might actually explain why the world in general is such a mess. But I digress...

The US is first in things like treating cancer and other "incurable" diseases, is first in access to technological and pharmaceutical innovation, and in a number of other areas that most US citizens highly prize -- and prize above the system's egalitarianism.

Anyway, France took the #1 spot on WHO's Health Care Hit Parade. A few facts:
  • French doctors have an average annual income of $55,000 (this was in 2008. They've gone on strike since then, so maybe now they make more.)
  • French citizens pay 18.8% in payroll taxes for their health care system, yet still....
  • Many French citizens also buy supplemental private insurance to cover the very extensive list of "co-pays" they must pay, even in their socialized system. The French manage their system and control costs by tacking on co-pays to discourage use of certain things -- like shopping around for doctors and fancy drugs.


In Germany, doctors typically earn 20% of a US physician's annual income, which Cato noted is about $146,000, and about $260,000 for specialists. German doctors also have threatened to strike for better wages.

In Norway:

Approximately 23 percent of all patients referred for hospital admission have to wait longer than three months for admission. The Norwegian government has responded by repeatedly and unsuccessfully atempting to legislate waiting lists out of existence. For example, under the 1990 Patients' Rights Act, patients with a condition that would lead to "catastrophic or very serious consequences" have a right to treatment within six months, if the treatment is available. In 2001, after several government reports had documented repeated violations of this policy, the government passed a new mandate requiring that a patient's medical condition be at least "assessed" within 30 days. Despite these paper
guarantees, waiting lists have not been substantially reduced.

In Greece, something like 45% of the health care system is funded by "informal payments" to doctors and health care providers. These are bribes.

On waiting lists in the UK:
Waiting lists are a major problem. As many as 750,000 Britons are currently awaiting admission to NHS [National Health Service] hospitals. These waits are not insubstantial and can impose significant risks on patients. For example, by some estimates, cancer patients can wait as long as eight months for treatment. Delays in receiving treatment are often so long that nearly 20% of colon cancer patients considered treatable when first diagnosed are incurable by the time treatment is finally offered.

In some cases, to prevent hospitals from using their resources too quickly, mandatory minimum waiting times have been imposed. The fear is that patients will flock to the most efficient hospitals or those with smaller backlogs. Thus a top-flight hospital like Suffolk East PCT was ordered to impose a minimum waiting time of at least 122 days before patients could be treated or the hospital would lose a portion of its funding.

In Portugal, the central government gives the various regions a block grant for health care, so care is very uneven from one area of the country to the other. In addition, you can't change doctors. So if you're unhappy with your doctor, or if your region doesn't have an MRI, for example, you just move to another part of the country.

Cato somewhat recommends the Swiss system, if you really feel you need socialized medicine after reading all this. In Switzerland, insurance is provided by private companies, and every citizen is required to buy a policy. Low-income individuals and families get government subsidies of some kind to pay for it. Costs in Switzerland are pretty well-contained because people actually have to pay for their own policies. That is, they have some idea of how much health care really costs.

If it seems like I'm quoting an awful lot, it's because these reports are so, so good and enlightening.

Don't listen to the pie-in-the-sky from politicians. Look up the facts! Go to:
Healthcare.Cato.org .

Then call your congressman and tell him to be very, very careful and to read the bill this time.

Friday, June 19, 2009

What's good about socialized medicine?

I've spent the last couple of hours looking for positive arguments in favor of socialized medicine. Apart from Michael Moore's "Sicko," which I discount, because Michael Moore is an idiot who doesn't seek facts but only tries to kick up dust (by the way, Sicko, you happy with the direction GM has gone?), I can't find any really strong arguments supporting the positive benefits of socialized medicine. That is, it doesn't seem to have many positive benefits, at least not as compared to the US "mixed" system.

People working from Sicko Michael Moore and Comrade Osama's perspective make a primary assumption that socialized medicine achieves certain benefits. That is, they ASSUME these benefits. They don't bother to provide any evidence to actually prove these benefits in fact exist. But here they are:

1.) Everyone gets "free," high-quality health care;
2.) Everyone gets the same "free," high-quality health care no matter their social or economic status;
3.) Socialized medicine is cheaper -- in the macro sense -- than free market care.

Based on actual human experience, none of this is true. It's a marxist pipe-dream.

1.) Socialized medicine is not "free." I've been listening to the current debates in congress about how to pay for coverage for an assumed 47 million Americans who right now are uninsured. Proposals include:
    • a 10-cent per drink tax on sugary drinks, like Coke and Pepsi, and apparently Snapple and orange juice as well, since these also contain very high amounts of sugar;
    • a 2% increase in income tax on high-income earners;
    • a 3% tax on employers on the health care benefits they provide employees;
    • an unspecified tax on health care benefits paid by employees -- that is, if a company pays $5,000 per year for an employee's heath insurance, that $5,000 expense would be counted by the IRS as "income" and the employee would have to pay income tax on it.

Hey, you know what? This isn't "free." And this is only to cover 47 million uninsured. As a matter of fact, in most cases -- that is, for the 200+ million Americans who do have health insurance, this means that they will pay much more for their health care.

2.) Everyone gets the same health care, no matter their social or economic status? Yeah, sure. According to an NBER paper by Sherry Glied, as quoted in a blog by John Goodman, who is promoting non-socialized medicine, in Canada, it's the highest income groups who make most use of the socialized health care system, and it's this same group who also has greatest access to additional care -- in the US, for example.

Additionally, in Canada and elsewhere where socialized medicine exists, a black market for health care services and dugs flourishes (this is not from the Glied paper, by the way, but documented by other souces, including people who live daily inside these systems.) You might compare this to getting a plumber to fix your toilet for cash after his regular working hours. He charges you less than union scale, doesn't apply for a municipal permit, and keeps the unreported and untaxed cash you pay him. You get professional-quality work at about half the "official" cost. Everyone gains.

That's the free market at work -- undercover, of course, and illegally, when the free exchange of products and services is banned by the government. Everyone involved could go to jail for this, or least pay a hefty fine.

And, of course, only people with cash-in-hand can afford black market services. People who are compelled to fork over all their discretionery income to the feds in taxes need not apply.

3.) Socialized medicine is cheaper, from the macro view. This is something that's just an outright lie. To hear people like Chrstine Romer (all she needs is a big red clown nose and fuzzy buttons to qualify for Barnum & Bailey) make this claim is just insulting. How can it be cheaper when, in addition to paying doctors and hospitals, the public treasury is also funding the enormous bureaucracy required to traffic hundreds of thousands of medical services, payments, and as Comrade Osama wants, a continually updated and always available bank of medical information?

This is just not even a remote possibility. Anyone who believes this should probably be kept under close supervision for their own good.

Right now, the proponents of socialized medicine claim that private and socialized health insurance can co-exist side-by-side. This is another, very obvious lie that should be apparent to anyone with functioning brain matter.

If an employer is forced to pay 3% more in taxes in order to provide employee health insurance, and then the employee has to pay income taxes on that insurance... what employer in their right mind would continue to offer health insurance? His employees might even beg him to Stop with the benefits! lest they be taxed into poverty.

So, what are the benefits again?

Apart from Sicko Michael Moore and socialist-leaning politicians, I haven't been able to find too many people who actually want socialized medicine in the USA. I haven't been able to find any real benefits that accrue to it.

So what the hell is this all about? It's starting to look like yet another way the buttheads in Washington are hoping to anihilate personal liberty. Once they get control of the health care industry, they can start dictating our behavior. Like already... If you're going to destroy your health drinking sugared Coke and Pepsi, then you deserve to die from diabetes.

And you want to do what on your vacation? What if you break your leg while rock-climbing? Should you be allowed to handle raw ground beef for that cook-out? Or would you have to somehow be bonded first to cover the additional cost should the worst happen? Or maybe you shouldn't be permitted that kind of dangerous behavior at all. It will cost the rest of us too much money.

So much to look forward to, huh?

Thursday, June 18, 2009

The REAL problem

Spent some time looking at conservative blogs and publications, conservative mailing lists, discussion groups, etc.

So we have a marxist in the White House destroying the capitalist economy, and some people continue to worry about Comrade Osama's birth certificate. If he was born in Kenya or Hawaii, and what someone who claims to be his great-uncle says.

You know what? Who gives a damn? Prez Comrade is not going to be booted out of office on the basis of his birth certificate or lack thereof. Headlines at worldnetdaily. com screamed something about how shocking it is that "Americans don't care!!" about Comrade Osama's birth certificate. Right. It doesn't matter. It's a non-issue. He's not going to be kicked out of office for lying about his place of birth -- if he is lying. So get off it and move on to something that's really important, like, no matter where he was born, this sonofabitch is anihilating individual liberty.

Elsewhere, I invited some libertarian-leaning people to read my blog about socialized medicine (It ain't NICE.) What was the reaction? Something like seven out of nine comments objected to my calling Comrade Osama "Osama."

Yeah, they put their finger on the big issue there. Not that Comrade Osama is appropriating all the heretofore privately-owned assets of the US health care industry and turning medical professionals into slaves of the state, but that I call him "Osama." I must applaud their breadth of vision and their ability to identify priorities.

In the past, I've been a card-carrying Libertarian and it's worth noting, given a range of issues and activities to pursue, Libertarians will generally head straight for the small potatoes -- the tiny inconsistencies in the "other guy's" argument, the fact that the Reps and Dems omitted from their campaign platforms any consideration about who could "claim" the moon in the course of space exploration. They kinda remind me of that one character in the novel, Catch-22, whose eyes look in two directions at the same time and who was apparently unable to focus on any one thing at a time.

With friends like these, is there any wonder the nation is going down the tubes? Before we look at issues, let's make sure all of our speech is politically correct.

FYI -- I don't play that game. In fact, I believe that's only a tool that the addle-brained use to hamstring political discourse. I try not to cuss too much on this blog. Those who know me in real life might understand that this takes some effort. I tend to call foul people foul names.

Comrade Osama is Comrade Osama. Not an insult, merely an accurate characterization. He's a marxist and a terrorist devoted to destroying the USA. What would you call him?

Am I supposed to show him respect? That would be lying. I don't have any respect for him, or for Pazzo Pelosi or Magic Martian Abracadabrajab, who's just now breaking heads in Iran. Do you respect these people? If so, why?

I actually expected better things from Project 912's web site -- the one launched by Glenn Beck. Some posters there are pretty cool and savvy. However, literally hundreds of posts were responses to some guy who calls himself Elliott, who apparently is trolling the list. For the uninitiated, "trolling" means posting deliberately provocative statements and/or insults that, if they work, distract everyone from the real issues.

They are a key reason why mailing lists usually don't accomplish anything, and why most of them end up being little more than exchanges of personal insults, or "flames." I'm quite certain that Comrade Osama actively recruits his halfwitted minions to surf the web in search of derogatory mailing lists, discussion groups, etc., and has charged them with the task of trolling these lists to keep the legitimate participants unfocused and ultimately impotent and ineffective.

The best and only effective way to deal with trolls on any mailing list is to ignore them. Last I saw on the Project 912 list was that another hundred or so posts had been devoted to figuring out this very simple social principle. I mean, when I was in kindergarten, my mom told me to ignore the obnoxious bullies. They only crave attention, and the more attention you give them, the worse their behavior gets. They're like flashers. Is this a lesson of such profound depth and complexity that it requires a lot of study and commentary? Just ignore the twit and move on.

I may be giving away my age here, but I was around for the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago -- the one where the Chicago Police ended up breaking heads on Clark Street and then again on Michigan Avenue. I didn't go down there; I was actually trying to avoid the police at the time. At any rate....

Had a friend who was working undercover for the FBI at the time. He was a student himself and able to mix with other students in the radical groups. His job was to identify the rabble rousers and report them to the FBI. Added benefit, he was an artist. He could draw portraits of said leftists and pass those to the FBI, since the people who did the inciting moved from place to place and usually operated under a number of aliases. The info my friend provided was almost as good as getting photographs.

At any rate, something the FBI advised my friend to do to break up protests -- even legitimate ones -- was to raise so many issues that the dissenting groups couldn't concentrate their numbers around any one thing. So instead of organizing a really effective and representative group to give voice to protest, you ended up with a bunch of disgruntled and isolated misfits, each nurturing their own petty grievance and battling each other about what was important, while the "powers that be" swept into office on the big issues.

Sound familiar?

Comrade Osama is destroying the concept of individual rights in the USA. He's obliterating capitalism and the free market.

Is there anything more important?

And please, feel free to check my spelling. Then I'll edit your commentary for grammatical errors and misuse of the English language.

Meanwhile, Rome burns.

Not with a bang....

How depressing. Since the banks are giving back the TARP money, Osama has now devised a plan to nationalize the banking industry outright, and just about everything else.

He's really quite the vicious son of a bitch, isn't he? It almost beggars belief. I can't even see his charm anymore. He just looks lame to me.

And why ABC-TV is giving him two hours of prime time to sell his socialized medicine scheme to the American public is beyond me. Apparently ABC-TV is even refusing to run any ads that counter the socialized medicine plan during their soviet-style propaganda show.

Must say, I haven't watched anything on ABC for some time. The last time I tuned into Stephanopoulos' Sunday morning political show, it was so pathetic it was difficult to watch. I would happily boycott ABC, but I never watch it anyway. I certainly won't watch their socialized medicine -- or should that be "snake oil" -- show. I couldn't tell you what else they air.

But don't you see what's happening here? Don't you see, or is that you just don't care?

You just assume that the USA is a free country and look no further. Ha-ha! Have you got a surprise coming.

"That's the way the world ends, not with a bang, but with a whimper."

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Guess we've got the answer

I started this blog by talking about Ben Franklin telling a woman that he and the other delegates had founded a republic, if we can keep it.

Guess we have the answer to that now.

R.I.P. to what was a really good idea -- the USA -- that spawned all kinds of prosperity, creativity, peace, and lots of stuff that was just plain fun.

Now time to hunker down and kiss the ass of the federal regulators. Just like The Third Reich, Soviet Union, et. al.

The market dropped more than 200 points over the last couple days. It's probably dropping even more now. Maybe it will come back up so I can cash in what's left of my IRA stock -- at least enough to fund my departure from Amerika.

Doubt I'll be able to sell this house for what I paid for it in this market, so that's a complete waste. At least I won't have to worry about the grass or cleaning out the gutters. The village can turn it into a parking lot -- their fondest dreams come true.

Now... where to go. Have to go check out some desolate islands in the South Pacific or someplace.

I'm glad I have less life to look forward to than to look back on. Most of my relatives are dead. So, not leaving a whole lot behind.

What bothers me the most is the death of what seemed to be a really viable ideal. That's just too bad. I had such hopes for the human race.

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

It ain't NICE

Just spent some time at www.nice.org.uk, which is the UK's health care rationing board. This is something that Osama has not only proposed for the USA, but the money to pay for it already has been allocated in the Stimulus Package. NICE develops standards for care for the UK health care monolith. I mean industry.

Apart from the physicians and other experts who are part of this organization, a Citizens Council of about 30 people -- representative of everyone in the UK, the organization says -- meet a few times every year to grapple with questions like, Should age be part of considerations in determining health care treatments?

Interesting to read the results of the Citizens Councils deliberations. Like, if older people can actually die from the flu, while younger people only get sick for a couple days but are likely to recover, then the limited supply of "flu jabs" should go first to older people. At least 22 people out of the whole Council seemed to agree on this. Others believed everyone should be treated the same.

At some point, this becomes so very, very sad. I'm sure both the experts and the Citizens Council of NICE are sincere in their efforts to consider the various aspects of health care, and I'm sure they hope to be fair. But take a step back and look again....

Suppose you fall down a flight of stairs and, while you weren't knocked unconscious or didn't seem to break any bones, when you wake up the next morning, your knee hurts so bad you can't bend it or straighten it out. It's black-and-blue and swollen. So what do you do?

Go the local health council, made up of physicians and other experts, accountants, and then a half-dozen of your neighbors. They all examine your knee from various perspectives and decide on what your treatment will be, including how valuable your comfort and mobility are to the community as a whole vs. the cost of treating your knee.

They may come up with some good decisions, like maybe x-ray your knee to determine if any bones are broken. Or they may decide that your knee doesn't matter half as much as buying a supply of swine flu serum, so they will invest no time or money at all in your small problem.

Your knee has become a political issue and will be evaluated and disposed of in that light.

This whole situation is predicated on two assumptions:

1.) All health care resources, including physicians' time and expertise, the means and tools of diagnosis and therapy, all of it, are community resources. They don't belong to any one person or corporation. They're like the Great Lakes; they're just out there.

2.) Your physical condition is everyone's business.

Is either one of these assumptions true? Or something you want to be true?

So you spend 12 or more years in medical and specialty studies, as an intern and resident, yadayadayada, all to become a public utility. After all, you said you wanted to help people. And then why all the study? Any treatment you can offer patients is predetermined by poltical functionaries and government accountants. Government accountants especially.

What about hospitals? They don't belong to anyone? They don't have to pay employees, buy equipment, turn some kind of profit so that they will attract investor money to pay for their construction and maintenance? What if your local Humana hospital no longer can make enough money to stay open? Then what happens? It may become part of your local tax burden.

When Medicaid went into effect in Illinois, at least five hospitals in poor city neighborhoods closed their doors. Their clientele were largely Medicaid/Medicare recipients. Those organizations don't pay the full cost for care. Those hospitals shut their doors. They simply don't exist anymore. People go to County Hospital instead, take a number, and wait all day in the Emergency Room for treatment.

And how much cost is generated by the governing bodies, enforcement agencies, political groups, etc. -- which are pretty much pimples on the butt of the actual practice of medicine? They aren't necessary for a citizen to visit a doctor, be examined, diagnosed, and treated. All these guide personnel and citizens committees just stand and watch, record, and evaluate. They serve no useful purpose in the health care process, except to provide a layer of control over it.

Does the practice of medicine require this additional layer of control? Or is it an obstruction and an unnecessary expense?

If you seriously want to cut the cost -- and I mean "cost" not "price" -- of medical care, get the politicians out of the system. They only add immeasurable and largely useless expense.

This is what it means to "politicize" an issue. Like women's rights. It's no longer your family's problem, Oprah needs to get involved and put it on TV so all kinds of strangers can become indignant over your husband's brutality and your own masochistic tendencies. And, by all means, let's vote on some aspect of this or another. Let's develop some kind of consensus, and in the case of bringing the government into an issue, let's make laws for "proper" behavior so that we lock up anyone who falls short of the standard devised by popular vote, or the "sigh meter."

Does anyone really want to live like this? Exhibitionists leap to mind. All others, not so much.

In the area of health care, with socialized medicine (making all health care resources community resources) and then especially inviting "representative citizens" in to help determine therapies -- this isn't even just plain-vanilla socialism. It's Marxist communism. Textbook Marxist communism. Osama can call it anything he likes, but if it walks like a duck....

Osama is a Marxist. Didn't I say so before? Need more evidence? Or is it more important to US citizens to find a Messiah to surrender to, rather than to take on the burden of living their own lives their own way?

It's just sad. In the words of Dante, from his account of hell: Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.

Monday, June 15, 2009

The Nanny State

Watched Prez Osama's speech to the AMA. First, very generally, something I find very disturbing about this person is the odd, almost drunken expression he gets on his face when people applaud him. He literally looks like he's melting into some sort of ga-ga emotion. This is positively weird. I'm not sure if this is narcissism or what. Sort of reminds me of Sally Field's "You love me! You really love me!" Only Sally Field didn't seem to abandon all reason the way the prez does. Is he so undone by flattery?

Regarding the speech itself, it raises more questions than it answers. What particularly struck me -- and I'm sure left many doctors wondering, as well -- is the changes in payment that Osama is proposing.

1.) Osama says doctors' pay should be "outcome-based." What the heck does that mean? If a patient dies, they don't get paid? If they misdiagnose something, they don't get paid? It is possible to misdiagnose something honestly, when one condition disguises another, for example, or if doctors are restricted in the diagnostic tests they can perform -- which is another proposal the prez made. Or, maybe the patient simply doesn't follow directions. Anyway, what exactly is "outcome-based pay" for doctors?

2.) Osama said doctors shouldn't be paid on a case-by-case basis, but for a whole treatment. Maybe he doesn't understand how doctors work? You don't get a cardiac surgeon to monitor after-surgery care, for example. A dermatologist might consult without contributing anything more. What constitutes a"whole treatment"?

To me, this sounds like he's suggesting that doctors take some kind of salary, no doubt determined by the Paymaster General, the new Compensation Czar Osama named last week. After all, once he's determined how much people at AIG and GM can make, this new czar will have plenty of time on his hands to try to control health care providers. Got to keep these government dudes busy or the general public might begin to wonder why, exactly, we have a Paymaster General in the first place, and that might lead to diminishing the number of people who can dictate policy without benefit of congressional input and reduce Osama's power. We couldn't have that in this administration.

3.) Osama says doctors should get bonuses when they're successful. Oh well, they used to have bonuses in the financial industry, and see how that worked out? The SEIU and Acorn didn't like it at all. It might indicate that some people are more equal than others. And exactly what kind of bonuses would doctors get? If they don't leave a sponge in your tummy after an appendectomy? If they actually cure someone? That's their job, isn't it?

Or is Osama talking about research? It's a possibility. Is research covered under Osama's health care plan? Where? In other nations with socialized medicine, research has been the first thing to go -- just too damn expensive.

4.) Osama keeps talking about preventive medicine. (He's actually says "preventative" -- which is a word that people have just made up. You really don't need the extra syllable.) Anway, preventive medicine has added considerably to the cost of health care in general. For example, getting that yearly PAP smear, mammogram, or now prostate exams. Even for people who have no family history of these problems or any symptoms. OK. Catching anything early can help to "cure" it, but the vast majority of these tests reveal nothing but a clean bill of health. And they cost the same whether doctors find anything or not.

I'm not saying regular testing is a bad idea; I'm just saying it's expensive and it won't reduce costs, except in those cases that do reveal a potential problem, and these are a very small percentage of cases.

Also, I've heard that these types of preventive tests actually are more useful for keeping machines busy to help pay down their costs. I mean, in any industry, you buy an expensive new machine, you've got to keep it going 24/7 to get any return-on-investment from it. The health care industry is not immune to this reality. It's like, you get a brand new MRI machine, you've got to start stacking up bodies to keep scanning pretty much 24 hours per day to keep up the payments on it.

And "prevention" generally means no smoking, eat a healthy diet, exercise regularly. So, how is this going to happen? Everybody already knows this. No matter how many billboards about cancer are pasted onto cigarette packs, 20% of Americans still smoke. Junk food is a whole industry. Kids don't like vegetables. I would guess that more people watch exercise on TV than actually exercise. That home stationery bicycle is useful mainly as a clothes hanger.

So how is this type of prevention to be enforced?

Picture droves of Health Care Tactical Squads in bright red lab coats and ski masks descending upon a suburban neighborhood, rousting couch potatoes from their living rooms and locking them into cages with just enough room for a treadmill. "Run!" they cry, holding a stop watch. "Run! Fifteen minutes and you'll get a Twinkie." And the Twinkie will be made of dessicated bean spouts and reconstituted soy milk.

I just can't wait.

Anyway.... Change of subject....

As I was signing on to the computer, heard that the Grand Wise and Perfectly Holy Poobahs in Iran are now firing upon the people who suspect election fraud in Iran. I mean, the protesters are being shot at and at least one apparently was killed. That's a sure sign of moral impeccability -- killing people who disagree with you.

Difficult to verify what's going on, since the Iranian government -- or should we say Holy Pantheon -- is blacking out all public communications, including cell phone service, Twitter, FaceBook and so on. I'm surprised they busy themselves with such trivia as technology. Why can't they just wave their magic wands?

Looks like a preview of the US's future, if, heaven forbid, we persist in smoking cigarettes, guzzling Coca-Cola, and munching on Cheetos. I mean, don't we absolutely need to be regulated? Life is just to precious to leave how and why we live all up to us as individuals. What we need is more and more control, layers of more government to make our decisions for us.

Somehow, I can't believe this is what George Washington, Tom Jefferson, Ben Franklin, John Adams, et. al., had in mind. And I don't believe the principles behind fair government change at all, no matter how big and complex a nation becomes. To call the USA a "free" country anymore is to misuse the word "free." Increasingly, it's becoming an over-taxed, over-regulated, and oppressive country.

My favorite quote is from Tom Jefferson: "If man is not fit to rule himself, how then can be fit to rule others?"

I guess the answer to that one is: You've got to manufacture some kind of Messiah with magical powers.

Sunday, June 14, 2009

OK, OK. Let me see if I have this straight....

Prez Osama is proposing to reduce, cut, and ration health care to the poor and elderly -- that is Medicare/Medicaid recipients -- in order to extend "free" health insurance to... whom? The supposed 47 million people who do not have health insurance, including the young and healthy who don't want to pay for it or can't afford it, those who can afford it but don't want to spend the money, and illegal aliens.

Is this making any sense? Take it away from people who really do need it and give it to those who probably have other options, or have no real business making claims upon the tax dollars of American citizens.

I'm seeing very little logic in this, but then I'm looking for positive advantages for the human race, not the huge gains the nanny state would make in terms of controlling even the most personal aspects of everyone's lives.

So start again... If I were looking to seize control of US citizens and severely restrict their personal liberty, how would I go about it?

Oh. Ok. Now I see.

More later... We actually have some sunshine today in Chicago, which means lawn mowing and window washing.

Saturday, June 13, 2009

Still don't know why

What continues to bother me about the USA's march into the dark night of socialism is... Why?

Is Prez Osama, Pazzo Pelosi and all the rest really, honestly willing to toss the whole country to the dogs to increase their base of power?

How sick is that?

Pazzo Pelosi, too, is doing all she can to stir up more anti-US hatred in the Middle East to step up the war and maximize the number of US soldiers killed there.

Why?

They all want to ensure that US citizens will live in dire poverty, hopelessness, and despair, with some subsistence-level economy, third-rate health care, and absolutely no way to improve it.

I can't even imagine the burden of hatred they carry for this country. They hate the USA so much they go through the b.s. involved in election campaigns, all the petty and brain-numbing business of government to acquire as much power as possible simply in order to .... destroy the nation.

I can understand ignorance and stupidity. But I can't understand deliberate destruction. It's so very sick and twisted.

Why?

If I hated this country that much, I'd get the hell out. They stay here and try to tear it all down.

Why?

Why don't they just leave us alone? I don't a give whit what they do, as long as they don't do it to me. Where did these jerks grow up? Surely not in America.

I'm too depressed to write anymore. I've really got to stop listening to the news.

Friday, June 12, 2009

Socialized medicine fails to impress

Prez Osama is fond of pointing out that the US Chamber of Commerce is on-board for socialized medicine. But it isn't.

Apparently the Chamber was invited to participate in the behind-closed-doors dealings by which legislation is created in the USA today. Apparently they agreed with legislators on some points and goals for "health care reform." However, in statements released yesterday -- as Osama was in Wisconsin touting their support -- the Chamber released several statements that show just the opposite.

Regarding a health care reform bill currently being considered in the Senate, the US Chamber of Commerce states in a news release:

Moses could change the Nile to run red, but we cannot wave a wand and create profits. The payments will come off the bottom line in some way such as lower wages and job loss and perhaps ultimately result in driving the employer out of business.

While there has been much focus on the so-called government public plan option, I believe, the issue of a new employer mandate, euphemistically called "play or pay," has largely been lost in the debate and in the press. This is highly ironic given that this is, let's be clear, a sweeping new burden on employers of unprecedented proportion in the benefits areas.

After meeting with stakeholders behind closed doors for nearly a year, the committee released a proposal that bears almost no resemblance to the points of consensus reached, which raises significant concerns to the employer community as a whole.

Rather than focusing on improving quality and lowering cost, the proposal centers on creating new burdens on America's job creators, significantly expanding public programs, and creating a new government-run insurance company.

I don't know. Does this sound like enthusiastic support or more like indignation and a sense of betrayal?

According to the US Chamber's full testimony (like the news release, this is available at http://www.uschamber.com/ look under the MEDIA tab), the bill in front of the Senate includes providing government-subsidized health insurance for families of four with incomes of up to $110,250 per year. Jeez, is this the new "poverty level"? Seems like most of America is doing awfully good.

Or maybe the Democrats are (still) trying to buy off the middle class. On the other hand, I would guess that any family of four making more than $110,250 per year would be expected to pay, and pay, and pay, and pay for this plan.

The Chamber's full statement notes:

Another concerning proposal is the creation of a new government-run health plan, euphemistically referred to as the “public option,” or brazenly referred to as “consumer driven.” Proponents say that this is necessary to “keep private insurers honest,” yet proposed market reforms should accomplish this goal without the creation of a new entitlement plan. Proponents claim that a government-run plan can compete on an equal playing field with private plans, but this would put the government in the position of being both a team owner and the referee; inevitably the government would move to give unfair advantages to the “public option,” just as they are considering doing now with the public financing of student loans.

Must admit that the AMA (American Medical Assn.) has disappointed me in the past in their position on socialized medicine. A few weeks ago I looked at their website for statements on where they stand and could find only rather vague yet lofty pronouncments about how everyone should have access to health care. They didn't say anything specific about how this should be provided.

Now Nancy H. Nielsen, M.D., AMA president, says:

Make no mistake: Health reform that covers the uninsured is AMA’s top priority this year. Every American deserves affordable, high-quality health care coverage.

Today's New York Times story creates a false impression about the AMA's position on a public plan option in health care reform legislation. The AMA opposes any public plan that forces physicians to participate, expands the fiscally-challenged Medicare program or pays Medicare rates, but the AMA is willing to consider other variations of a public plan that are currently under discussion in Congress. This includes a federally chartered co-op health plan or a level playing field option for all plans. The AMA is working to achieve meaningful health reform this year and is ready to stand behind legislation that includes coverage options that work for patients and physicians.


So it seems the AMA is not too happy with the way their position has been bandied about and mischaracterized by the liberal left. Uh, I mean the New York Times.

I will only comment that Rule #1 from Alinsky's Rules for Radicals suggests that even if your organization is small, you should figure out a way for them to make a lot of noise so that it seems you have lots and lots of support. I guess claiming that the AMA and the US Chamber of Commerce are solidly behind the federal government's socialized medicine scheme is just one example.

Was going to call this blog "Liar! Liar! Pants on fire!" but the search engines wouldn't have picked up on it being about socialized medicine. They just aren't as smart as American citizens are in picking up these kinds of things.

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Keeping the private sector honest

President Osama had me in stitches today. He was in Green Bay, Wisc., kicking off his socialized medicine putsch. When he said a government-run insurance program would "keep the private sector honest," I actually had Diet Pepsi shooting out my nose. My cat was alarmed, seeing his thumb-equipped link to the can opener actually collapsed in a heap on the floor, gasping for breath, doubled over in laughter. That was a good one, Barry!

I think I mentioned before that I write fiction, among other things. (At least I'm honest about it.) A couple months ago I was trying to contrive some dire plot for a mystery, surfin' the Web, looking for interesting crime stories. Man, I never realized that Medicare/Medicaid is such an easy mark.

If you watch any TV, you've probably seen those commercials for the padded scooters for seniors and others. They're like upholstered wheelchairs, motorized. Some of the sellers give you a "Grabber" for free if you order the scooter. And the ads always claim, "You pay nothing!!" The seller will be happy to fill out all the paper work for you and submit it to Medicare/Medicaid for payment. Then there are also other ads for companies who sell diabetes supplies and other medical equipment. They usually feature some older movie star, apparently to lend some credibility to the whole thing since Hollywood is so full of heavyweights.

I don't mean to cast aspersions on all of these companies. I suppose some are honest, especially if they've been around for a while. However....

In doing the research for the mystery, I came across many, many accounts of rather elaborate scams involving these types of companies. Sure, they'll do all the paper work. They want your Medicare/Medicaid account number and your doctor's ID number, and then they'll just keep on billin' and never look back! Whether or not you receive anything more than a scooter and a grabber, the supplier will bill Medicare/Medicaid for hospital beds, a lifetime inventory of adult diapers, all kinds of stuff. You may be surprised to learn some day that you had major surgery that one weekend you thought you spent at the casino.

Something like 15% of all Medicare/Medicaid is wasted through fraud. Though I don't have the statistics in front of me, I do believe the last number I heard was that something like $60 billion (with a b) was flushed down the toilet last year through these schemes.

The federal government doesn't have the time or the staff to double-check all the claims they get in, and it's not their money anyway. They just pay and pay and pay.... Your tax dollars at work --or actually resting comfortably in somebody's bank account in the Cayman Islands.

On the other hand, in the free market, or at least among privately-owned insurance carriers, fraud like this just couldn't be tolerated. Private companies are actually accountable to their shareholders and even to their customers. They don't have a printing press in the back room to keep grinding out hundred-dollar bills. They actually keep track of their claims and expenditures. Unlike the buffoons in Washington.

So, anyway, I had a good laugh, and after a time, my cat came out from behind the couch.

It boggles my mind that President Osama so underestimates the intelligence of the American public. Here's a news flash for you, Barry -- in the US, the brightest and the best are not in government; they work in the private sector, where they have more freedom to innovate and to grow. Until you got into office, the private sector in America offered some real freedom to do this. So apparently since you've never worked in the private sector, you're judging all of us by the butthead louts you've encountered in your government work.

Most of us private American citizens are a whole lot smarter than that, but you really have no way of knowing that, do you? Your conversations with the public usually go only one way.... for fear of encountering another Joe-the-Plumber, maybe, who might ask you an embarrasing question? Like... isn't that socialism?

Oh, hey... ol' Barry isn't a socialist. Nah.... He's.... Santa Claus.

Does anyone except Nancy Pelosi believe anything this clown says anymore? And she's probably afraid Barry will take away the Air Force jet if she questions him too closely.

I don't know how he does it. He doesn't want to run an auto company. He doesn't want to run banks and financial institutions. He's just strolling down the street and these companies glom onto him, begging him to nationalize them and seize control. It's actually amazing. Nothing like that has ever happened to me or to anyone else I've ever met. It must be part of the Messiah thing.

Because it can't all be a coincidence, can it?

By the way, I found a copy of Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals and Prez Osama definitely does play by those rules. I'm paraphrasing them and will post them. Apparently Saul Alinsky, a devout communist, or his heirs, who apparently are not opposed to collecting scummy capitalist profits, have pretty tight clamps on the copyright -- they don't want to lose a penny on unauthorized circulation -- so I'll have to paraphrase to prevent a law suit.

Liars and hypocrites. It's really amazing. Well, not really amazing, considering where they come from and where they want to go.

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

The civil society

The civil society is a certain type of ideal where people meet and discuss issues that affect them all and try to reason out solutions that they all can live with. Notice especially that this ideal is based on reason -- the human capacity to deal with reality in the abstract, to discern cause-and-effect relationships, to project the future consequences of actions taken now. It's also closely related to the concept of "rule by law, not by man." That is, dispassionate, objective law, not the subjective, arbitrary (though maybe empathetic) personal preference of an individual authoritarian.

The Enlightenment is the historical period that made a virtue of reason. It's even called The Age of Reason. Some people believe reason has failed, but it only fails when we fail to exercise it.

And when reason fails, what are we left with?

People grabbing a gun and going down to the Holocaust Museum, or the local Army recruiting office, or an abortion clinic to fix things on their own. I could go on naming particular issues, but hopefully you get the drift.

The US government in particular is very special creation. If government in general -- any government -- is a given society's method of making decisions that are binding on all members, then the US government was devised to make such decision-making as fair and open a process as possible. The Constitution describes a government that provides a forum for reasoned and fair decision-making in areas that constitute "public" life.

The US government was never intended to serve as a moral authority in the same way that religion or philosophy is. It was never supposed to micro-manage everyone's lives, rather only to protect our ability to make personal decisions for ourselves.

Right now the US is involved in a broad argument about how extensive the reach of government should be. The argument has gotten away from the issues enumerated in the Bill of Rights, so that now apparently whatever personal decisions we are allowed come under the vague and changeable heading of The Right to Privacy.

This is pretty much the opposite of what the Founding Fathers had in mind. The public space -- that part of life that's controlled by governmental authority -- was supposed to be kept relatively small in its scope, but that's not what's happened over time.

Conservatives want government limited to one degree or another. Liberals want government expanded to control as much as possible. Everyone seems to have some hobby-horse that they believe requires the compulsion of government control. The Founding Fathers talked about "toleration," or letting others be, even if you believed they were wrong. Now special interest groups of every stripe own one or another issue that they claim needs to be legislated one way or the other for the good of all.

But you see, when you try to extend governmental -- or really any kind -- of social control, you only generate ever-accelerating controversy about what is "good" for all people, since all people will be forced to live with it or under it. Non-conformists, including creative people, often feel the pressure first, feel that they're being pushed into places that they don't want to go.

The alternative is to agree to disagree. In other words, abandon attempts at control and simply tolerate behavior that might be repugnant to us personally. As Jefferson said, "It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg...."

The conflict is not incidentally between right and left, Democrats and Republicans, socialists and capitalists. The primary source of the conflict is between individual rights and social control.

So not only is there is a loonie firing randomly (?) at visitors at the Holocaust Museum, but the killing of Dr. Tiller, who performed abortions, and also of a US soldier by a radical muslim, all over the last couple of weeks.

Seems people of every political shade are abandoning law, since the law just isn't working out in their favor. Or maybe the law has become less and less reasonable, less and less tolerant, and more and more oppressive -- for everyone. Maybe there's just too much of it.

As government control increasingly becomes social control -- that is, polticizing every aspect of human life and carving out laws of behavior for every person in every possible situation -- there's only going to more of this kind of thing. People feeling pressured and abused, yet helpless to save themselves in any other way but to strike out at whomever they perceive to be "the enemy."

In public relations Lesson #1 is: Don't corner your opponent, because if you push them up against the wall, they have no option but to attack you.

Exactly when and who they attack is pretty much up to them, and no amount of government control and additional legislation will ever change it. In fact, harsher control only makes it worse.